


Significant Fights

by The_Inebriated_Literary_Virtuoso



Series: Chronicles of A High Functioning Sociopath and The People That Love Him [5]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Arguments, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fights, Greg Lestrade & John Watson Friendship, Hurt John Watson, Lestrade's parents are lesbians, M/M, Multi, Oh she's bored and wrote another fic, Original Female Character(s) - Freeform, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Verbal Abuse, What is this?, basically this is an au bc nothing is canon, tags to be added as i please, the holmes boys still make me cry, why Sherlock and Mycroft made mummy upset at christmas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-25
Updated: 2014-08-23
Packaged: 2018-02-10 09:57:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2020749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Inebriated_Literary_Virtuoso/pseuds/The_Inebriated_Literary_Virtuoso
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Behind all the fluff and general pleasant of relationships of any kind there are things that change people and relationships; Arguments.<br/>Here are four significant fights that affected each man and just how they affected their lives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Mycroft Holmes

He had been nineteen the day it happened.   
He had come home from Oxford for holiday per mummy’s request. In all honesty Mycroft had not intended to go home that year, as he had not for the past three years. It wasn’t anything to do with family, really, but Mycroft was busy, Mycroft was working, he had a life. And letting himself get sentimental and tedious over his relations just could not be done. But his mother had called him relentlessly and asked in the saddest and kindest voice and Mycroft relented immediately. That was how he ended up in the little cottage with his mother and father and Sherlock in Sussex during the winter holiday.   
“So, Myc, found any cute Oxford or Cambridge boys yet?” His mother pried as they cooked in the kitchen busying themselves with the Christmas dinner. She was also very well aware of his preferences.   
He sighed. “For the last time, mummy, not interested. And it’s Mycroft, why did you insist on naming me that if you’ve struggled to the very end.” His mother gave him a small frown as she kneaded bread dough.   
“I just worry about you, Mycroft. You can hardly blame me. It must be so lonely with just you in London. Haven’t you met anyone?”   
Mycroft looked away from her and at the chicken she had asked him to prepare. “I don’t need other’s, mummy. Alone is fine. Alone is what protects me.”   
She stared at him sadly. “You know it’s not because of how you look, don’t you, my dear?” She hadn’t called him that since he was ten and had asked her to kindly cease. He looked at the dead carcass as if it were the most interesting thing in the room. For him, it seemed so.   
“I know, mother.”   
She sighed. “I only want for you to be happy, Mycroft.”   
He didn’t say anything. There was nothing he could say. They had had this conversation too many times before for there to be anything new to be said.

 

It was a quiet Christmas dinner and afterwards Sherlock quickly rose and left, having left a full plate and three family members in his wake.   
Mycroft’s father sighed. “He’s been this way since you left for Uni. Hasn’t been healthy, or talkative. I worry about him.”   
Violet nodded. “And you should, Sig. He’s not listening to any sort of reason.”   
Mycroft sighed and left the table.   
“Oh dear, will you not be joining us for a cuppa?” His mother inquired as he walked away. Mycroft turned and gave her a small smile.   
“Of course, I shall just be a moment.”   
As he entered the room it looked no different than it had since the last time he had been there and he would have assumed that nothing had changed except for the adolescent boy lying in the middle of the bed with his hands raised in a steeple motion. Mycroft looked at the walls and noticed they no longer held up the posters Mycroft had given him, but the posters were in tatters in a corner and Mycroft was about to inquire after them but Sherlock beat him to it.   
“I ripped them.” Sherlock said simply.   
“Why?” Mycroft asked softly.   
“I hate you. Why are you here?” Sherlock ignored his question.   
“Our parents worry about you.”   
“They do little else.”   
Mycroft sighed and rubbed his hands over his eyes. “Sherlock, what is this all about?”   
Sherlock didn’t respond.   
Mycroft sat down at Sherlock’s messy desk. “Sherlock, why won’t you talk?”   
Sherlock rose quickly from his position on the bed. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”   
“Sherlock, please, it’s Christmas, you’ll upset mummy.” Mycroft spoke softly.   
“You haven’t been here long enough to know what will upset mummy, Mycroft!” Sherlock snapped.   
Mycroft settled back. He could feel the impending explosion and perhaps he should have been just a bit irrational to get it out in better ways, but he was not omniscient and therefore what happened could have been avoided but it was not.   
Mycroft settled for the fight. “Ah.”   
Sherlock began to pace in front of him. “Is that all you have to say for yourself, Mycroft?! We haven’t seen you in three years and that’s all you have to say?!”   
Mycroft looked away from his fuming brother. “What do you want me to say? I shan’t apologize for wanting to create a name for myself.”   
Sherlock paused for a moment. He stopped his pacing right in front of Mycroft, and Mycroft stared right back at him. “I waited for you to come. Mummy promised every year.”   
Mycroft scoffed. “I’m hardly to blame for our mother’s empty promises.” It wasn’t that he had meant to be this way, so condescending and patronizing, but he had to do it. It wasn’t that he wanted to, but he couldn’t get in the position he wanted and then constantly promise family gatherings and meetings, and never come through with them because of work. Mycroft was making it easier for his family to push him away. And it killed him. It killed him the way that Sherlock looked at him as if he was a fictional hero Sherlock no longer believed in.   
“What the fuck happened to you, Myc?” Sherlock had only called him that in their younger years when he sought comfort. Mycroft laboured to make himself unaffected by his brother’s quiet pleas.   
Mycroft didn’t want to answer the question, possibly because he couldn’t. “Let’s not do this now, Sherlock. Mummy will be terribly upset.”   
“I don’t give a damn about our mother, Mycroft! What happened to us?!”   
Mycroft suddenly felt tired, too tired to keep up with his straight posture and the words that spilled from his mouth in lies he hated. In a small moment of weakness Mycroft answered his brother honestly. “I don’t know, Sherlock. I don’t know.”   
Sherlock snorted and stood back to examine his brother. Bespoke vest. Leather Armani shoes. Wrinkles on the forehead. Scars on skin peeking out of the cufflinks. Politics. Meeting on Christmas day. Important. Invaluable. Significant. **Politics**. Liar. Tired. Upset. Brother. _Three years_. **Liar**. _**Deceitful.**_ “Of course you don’t. You’re pathetic.”   
Mycroft didn’t disagree. He responded simply, as if the words were fact. “I know.”   
Sherlock looked at him. “Why won’t you fight back? Why won’t you be like it was before?”   
“Nothing is like it was before, Sherlock! Nothing is the same! I changed! I changed, that’s what people do, Sherlock!” Mycroft snapped.   
The moment that those world left his mouth an eerie silence fell in the room and something shifted.   
After a moment Mycroft got up, smoothed over his bespoke suit and walked to the door. He left a small box on the shelf next to the door. Sherlock was still staring at the wall in shock. “I’m sorry. Happy Christmas, I suppose.”

Inside the box was a small retractable magnifying glass in black cloth.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I'm very sorry that I haven't updated as often as I'd like! I just got done with a big project and I will try updating either weekly or monthly. So for her very vehement support this one goes to Ariadneowl (:

His mothers loved him. Throughout his life they had been very adamant to let him know that. He knew it and it was the exact reason he was sitting in their kitchen at three in the morning in his childhood home in East Sussex.

“Oh! And then what did that little wretch say?” Elena Lestrade said, with a hiss.

Alexandra Lestrade smirked at her wife. “Down, girl. Gregory, dear, what exactly happened?” Her eyes trained on her son’s hunched figure.

“I don’t know, mum. I confronted Elizabeth about the cheating and the PE teacher and she blamed it on my bisexuality.”   
Both women tilted back in shock.

“Oh that twat!” Elena growled.

“Dear, please be mindful of Gregory right now.” Alex told her softly.

“No, no, I mean, by all means. I agree, mum.” Greg hunched over and put his head in his hands.

He couldn’t believe that this had happened. He was a little over thirty five and they had been married since they were twenty.

Elizabeth had been a kind and sweet nurse when he met her and he had been getting out of a particularly bad relationship with a man when he had met her. He had married her against his better judgement because he thought perhaps they could have had a nice life. He certainly loved her and had given her as much as he could. He had been surprised to find that she had not done the same.

He looked up at Elena. “I’ll need a lawyer.”

She nodded curtly. “Anything for you, my dear boy.”

He smirked at her and remembered the first fight he had had with Elena when he was thirteen.

* * *

 

_They never discouraged his style of his lifestyle. He asked for a leather jacket when he was twelve and never took it off until it stopped fitting him when he was fourteen. His mother, Alexandra, had always been the one who blatantly loved him, the one who was always obvious in her affection towards her son. He may not have liked it but he appreciated it, knew that she was the first one he could come to._

_It was when she was away for a job in another country that Greg was finally confronted with the reality, as he saw it, that his mum, Elena, did not feel anything towards him. He had realized it in a fit of teenaged drama and was unable to get rid of the notion and slowly got more angry as the more reasonable it seemed._

_He was blaring music when Elena walked into his room and turned it off._

_“Hey!” He protested in indignation._

_She looked at him softly and pointed at his clock on his desk. “It’s late, Gregory, the neighbours are sleeping. And you need to sleep.”_

_She was moving to close the door when she heard a murmured, “As if you’d care.”_

_She paused in the door way. “Excuse me?” She could hardly believe the words had left his mouth until he looked up from his Fangoria magazine with clouded eyes._

_“I said as if you’d care.” He spoke in a cautious and slightly irritated voice._

_She furrowed her brow and stepped back into the room and closed the door. “Why would you say that? Of course I care.” She spoke in that soft voice she used on clients that were too riled._

_He shook his head. “No. I don’t want to talk about it. Get out.”_

_She stood there with her arms crossed, eyebrow raised, and waiting for an answer._

_He tried to read his Fangoria but was unable to with her standing over him. “I said get out, mum!”_

_“Explain yourself.” She used the tone that almost made Greg flinch._

_He looked out of his window at the bustle of London and all the people that moved and never stopped. “You don’t show it. Not the way that mum does it.”_

_“Show what?” Elena was truly confused, completely baffled by her son’s fragmented sentences._

_“You don’t show that you love him!” He snapped and looked at her and although he wasn’t crying she could see hurt in his eyes._   
_“I know it’s stupid, and probably something a fairy would do, but I’d like to know that you both wanted me. Mum says that you loved differently and I don’t mean to act like such a girl, but I don’t see it, and I’d like to see it.”_

_She uncrossed her arms and sat at the edge of his bed as he sat up and pulled his knees to his chin to hide his face._

_“I have never been appalled by a family member in my life.” She said to him, and smirked to let him know she was jesting._

_“Never have I heard such flagrant sexist terms used and paired with such an idiotic notion.” She said._

_“Mum, I-” He started, but she held up a hand._

_“Don’t apologize. I don’t want your apologies. Your mother is right, Greg, I don’t show love in the ways that I should, but that’s because of the family I had. We had been very reserved, we lived quietly and when things got emotional we were trained to turn it off, that we had be calm and collect constantly and when I got away from that I changed, or at least I tried to. I have been better because of your mother, but I am not perfect, Greg. I am aware of the way that I am but I can only ask that you tell me when I am doing wrong. I can’t tell where my cues are, Greg, and I need help. But,” she turned to him and she had tears in her eyes that shone with absolute pride and sadness and Greg was so moved by it he moved and put a hand around her, “don’t ever, for a second, think that I am not proud of you, or that I don’t love you. Your mother and I chose you in that orphanage because of all that you are and all that we saw in you and I have never regretted the decisions I’ve made. You are brilliant, Greg, and while I may mess up and not say it, I hope you can look into my eyes and see it.”_

 

* * *

 

Greg smiled at her from his seat in the kitchen and when she looked back at him he knew with absolute certainty that even though his wife was no longer with him and that had uprooted parts his life, he’d be perfectly fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I bet no one can guess about the argument in Sherlock's chapter.


	3. Sherlock Holmes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well all aboard the angst train, be prepared to feel some feelings.

They had been married for little over a year the day that their first big argument happened.

Sherlock and John argued of course, but it was small things, inconsequential things. They were little tiffs about the grocery and the bodies in the fridge and birthdays. That part had been normal, that had never changed. The one thing that had changed was Sherlock’s inability to be bored. Never in his life had he been so fascinated with the rituals that were required in marriage. It was an endless parade of experiments and tests and knowledge.

The problem that arose happened when Sherlock finally got bored. The things he’d learned had needed long-term results and he was left with boredom, utter boredom for the first time in almost five years.

John had been at work and he sat in his chair and wondered what recreational activities he could do while he was unoccupied. He was bored, and Sherlock knew that any longer  and he’d reach a sulk, or even worse, a black mood. Sherlock hated black moods. Hated him because it was as if he was locked in his mind palace and forced to think, forced to remember all of John’s cries, and Molly’s whimpers, and Mrs. Hudson’s flinches, and Mycroft’s avoidance of mirrors. He was forced to think and think and think until his brain told him that observation was the curse of a genius, that it only brought out the absolute worst. He got up, tried very hard not to think about any of those things and stared out his window.

It was at this precise moment that he went out and on the corner saw two people inconspicuously, to the rest of the world, exchanging drugs and money from hand to hand.

He turned the corner and knew where he’d go.

 

He felt a buzz. It was a slow buzz and it raged through his brain and enveloped everything in molasses and his brain was quiet and the world around him was quiet and he was _calm_. Sherlock felt the drugs in his veins and the rush of blood going through every nerve in his body and he felt alive and asleep and dead and awake all at once. His eyes were shot from the reflection he saw across the room and he hoped that that would be gone by the time that John returned home.

He looked out of the windowless crevice in the wall of the crackhouse and saw the moon stare back at him. Moon. Late.

That meant John was home.

He stumbled upwards and walked out of the den, handing money to the man who hung around by the door and had watched in amusement as he took one hit, and then another, and then a third until he remembered he wanted to live afterwards.

He walked for a bit until he was capable of hailing a cab and then he was promptly dropped off at Baker Street, whereupon he stumbled up the stairs.

He was aware of the things around him, capable of thought and action and emotion, but everything around him moved like liquid and he imaged that’s what living in water felt like.

He opened the door and was surprised that John was not in the living room. He sat in his chair quietly, expecting to be able to ride out the temporary and, unfortunately, short-lived high. However, when he turned his head John was sitting at the kitchen table, with a cup of tea in his hand and Sherlock, had he not been foolishly high, would have the sense to feel guilty.

He didn’t say anything.

John didn’t say anything.

After a while Sherlock felt lethargic and wondered what the argument would be like in the morning.

“Did you enjoy it?” A voice, John’s voice, said, in the dead quiet of the night.

Sherlock just stared at him and John kept looking at the saucer that held his tea.

John looked over and Sherlock felt the remnants of his high fade away at the harsh, cold, and disappointed look in his eyes. “Was it worth it?”

Sherlock looked away, that face felt too familiar, he’d seen it too many times. He’d seen it on Lestrade, Mycroft, Molly, Mummy, Father, even his own grandma. He’d spent too long dealing with the guilt that eventually ruined his high. He’d spent too long just feeling when the drugs were supposed to do the opposite and numb the pain.

“Well was it?” John said, harshly. He stood in the doorway leading to the kitchen and Sherlock hadn’t even noticed he moved.

“Yes.” Sherlock didn’t feel like lying. Not tonight.

John stood there and he slumped forward and Sherlock wanted to reach for him, wanted to hug him, wanted to tell him that he was in no way responsible for Sherlock’s addictive tendencies.

John turned around without a word and went to clean up the teacup and Sherlock got up and moved to the doorway, watching John carefully. He watched at John’s eyes brimmed with tears that he knew John would not shed.

“I’d like to think we’re moderately happy together.” John said carefully, facing away from him.

Sherlock nodded. “I am inexplicably happy with you, John. You know that.”

The teacup crashed into the sink and John cursed and gripped at the edge of the sink with white knuckles and Sherlock flinched.

John turned to him. “Then why?! Why do you think it’s okay to ruin the one good thing in my life with drugs?! I already have to deal with one addict in the family, Sherlock! Don’t make it two.”

Sherlock simply stared. “I was. . . Bored.” It sounded like such a petty excuse when he heard it fall from his lips and he knew he’d have to brace himself against the storm that would follow.

“Bored?! Bored! Sherlock normal people get bored all the time and they don’t go shooting up!”

Sherlock looked back at him. “You don’t understand.”

John glared. “Why? Because I’m not a bloody genius?! I’d take being a regular doctor than a crack addict genius any day!”

“Of course you would, John! Everything about you is absolutely average! Why would you choose that over something so normal?!” They were biting at each other now and Sherlock felt somewhere in his Mind Palace that there was something that told him to stop, to let John fight, to let him yell, to just keep quiet.

But Sherlock was so tired of his Mind Palace and of all the thinking and the incessant clatter and deductions and he just wanted to yell and scream and that’s exactly what they did.

 

John huffed and let out a sarcastic chuckle. “Oh of course, I’m sorry, because being a junkie with brains sounds so good right now!”

“Imagine when it’s actually you, imagine when everything moves and never stops and you can never turn it off! You normal average people barely think enough to get your brains going in the first place! You lot are so stupid!”

The words got more harsh and the tone was yelling and Mrs. Hudson, clad only in a nightgown and some reading glasses came into the kitchen where they were across the room from each other. The atmosphere felt like that of a boxing ring.

“Oh my, what is all this shouting about?” She said, in a very timid and frightened voice.

“Not now, Mrs. Husdon!” They both barked and she scurried out, closing the door behind her and John just shook his head in disbelief.

“Better to be an idiot married to a junkie than the actual junkie, Sherlock. And if you think I’m the idiot here then you must have shot up more than I’d care to know.”

The words stung, Sherlock felt that much. He felt the sting and the bite in those words and he was appalled to find that in his anger John had meant to say those things to hurt him.

He should have stopped. He should have listened to the advice from the Mind Palace.

“And I’d do it again.”

He didn’t.

 

John stared at him and Sherlock was so wrapped in this game of trying to hurt each other that he hadn’t cared about the way tears stung at John’s eyes and John looked at him as though he were a stranger.

“I can’t do this.”

Sherlock snapped out of his still state and looked at John in disbelief. He regretted everything they’d just said and Sherlock wished he hadn’t even left the building that day. Everything he’d said had been his childish defense against dealing with his problems and now that John had said what Sherlock had always feared he’d say he wished that he didn’t have a past, that he wasn’t a genius, that he hadn’t even looked out his window or seen those two on the corner and Sherlock had never _regretted_ so fully.

“What do you mean?” He said softly.

John looked on the verge of tears when he spoke and his voice crack. “You know what I mean. I have watched my sister destroy her life. I have watched my father destroy his as well. I have watched you kill yourself once and I will not sit here and watch you kill yourself a second time.”

Sherlock stared at him, still, watching the tears fall down his face and Sherlock wasn’t sure why but it hurt, it hurt more than faking his death, and more than his days through rehab, and it hurt more than all the torture he’d received at the hands of those in Moriarty’s web. Sherlock was agonized down his bones by the fact that simple, beautiful, brave, charming, and caring John Watson had tears running down his face. Because of him.

John took his coat from off his chair and walked towards the door. He paused and spoke with his back facing Sherlock. “I believe in you. I believe in Sherlock Holmes. I was foolish to think that would be enough.”

Sherlock heard the resounding slam of the door and fell to his knees when it clicked shut.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I'm going to cheat and the next chapter will be about hos this argument is resolved. Because I can.


	4. John Watson

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Any suggestions for the next piece I should do in this selection?? c:

John knew he wouldn’t go anywhere where there was alcohol. Alcohol resulted in mistakes and after the ones he’d just made he couldn’t bear to make more.

**_Better married to junkie than being one._ **

He’d walked around Regent Park for more than an hour after the fight, no choice to himself but review all the biting words he’d said.

**_You must have shot up more than I care to know._ **

Oh he’d been a fool, yes he had. He’d been angry, having stayed up until three in the morning.

He remembered the text Mycroft sent him as he was happily walking home from his shift at surgery.

**_Sherlock’s left the flat. Resource says he’s in The Place of Incident. I had thought you’d perhaps like to know. –MH_ **

John had stopped, paused in the middle of the street and felt his stomach drop. Then came the waiting. The waiting until Sherlock climbed their steps cautiously, too cautiously, and then the fight happened.

He had said some things he had regretted as soon as his feet left the threshold of 221B but they were also true. And be that as it may he couldn’t find it in himself to feel indifferent towards Sherlock’s actions. John knew he was perfectly justified in his anger at Sherlock Holmes. They had had a conversation when they had barely been married and had agreed that they would do their best as a couple to keep Sherlock from relapsing into those dark days before he even knew Watson. John had been kind and accepting and had hoped that unlike his sister Sherlock would choose to stay perfectly righted. To find a text that told him that this was not true had been devastating. What’s worse was that all he could think about when Sherlock confessed to him was how much it felt like he was sixteen again. It felt exactly like all those times when he had waited at the table, tea in hand, and had begged Harry to stop, to give up the alcohol. He had begged her days and nights and had almost given up being a doctor just to see that she stayed sober and happy and stable.

It felt too much like déjà vu and John hadn’t been able to cope, still feeling that adolescent hopelessness and dejection he had just like those days in his youth. He walked and walked in the brisk November night and wondered why he had chosen to be surrounded by addicts. He was a doctor of course, caring was in his nature and in his job description, but he’d meant what he said to Sherlock. He would not be care-taker again. He would not be the good doctor when he already knew how the story ended and the characters acted.

 

 

He woke up on the couch in Greg’s living room and was hit with a splitting headache.

He got up, folded the blankets and just as he was finished Greg walked out of his bedroom and gave John a sympathetic look.

“Sleep well, mate?” Greg asked in a soft, cautious tone.

John nodded. “As good as I expected it to be, the shoulder is acting up.”

Greg nodded and motioned at his bathroom down the hall. “Paracetamol is in there if it hurts anymore.”

John sighed and sat on Greg’s couch. “Thanks for letting me stay, Greg. I didn’t mean to bother you so late.”

Greg snorted. “I was there for his dark days; this wouldn’t be the first time someone crashed on my couch because of Sherlock Holmes.”

John nodded and Greg moved slowly to sit with him. “Wanna talk about it?”

John sighed. “I just. . . I’m hurt, Greg. Very hurt. And I’m not sure what I’m going to do now. That arrogant cock of a man is my husband after all.”

Greg sighed and settled back.

“I know it might not seem true, but he’s better because of you, you know. Before you met him I wasn’t sure he’d ever feel anything. Hell, I was worried he wasn’t even a man.”

John furrowed his brow and looked at Greg’s faded carpet with feigned interest. “You’re right. It doesn’t matter.”

John got up slowly and limped to the front door.”

“Huh.” Greg said.

John turned around. “What?”

Greg lifted an eyebrow and shrugged. “It’s just. . . Your limp is back.”

And John tried very hard not to slam the door.

 

John called in work and walked back to the flat and was glad it had a very specific lack of noise, more specifically, a lack of Sherlock. He walked up to the room he hadn’t used in two years and he could smell the dust in the air. He sat on the bed and the way he thought long and hard about the mistakes he’d made seemed strangely reminiscent to the moment he sat in his bedsit and held onto the cold handle of the gun and wondered when he’d pull the trigger. He wouldn’t do that now of course, but he needed time to think, time to plan, time to be angry and upset and sad and disappointed and just _feel_. He laid back and he looked up at the blank wall and saw all the moments he’d shared with Sherlock. He recalled the laughs behind closed doors, and the laughing at crime scenes and the ridiculous reception and their first kiss and their first time together as one and he was overwhelmed. Overwhelmed with the urge to save something he hadn’t known had been in danger; his marriage. They loved each other, of course John knew that, but he refused to be cheated on with cocaine.

He stared up at the ceiling and thought until he saw nothing and then he let out a soft sob, one of those sobs that are meant to be private, to be quiet. It was a sign of all the times John had held back from feeling too much because people depended on him. He let out a few tears until eventually melancholy and fatigue caught up with him and he drifted to sleep.

 

When he woke up it was once again quiet. He carefully walked down the stairs and when he looked he found no sign of Sherlock but it was night out and he figured he’d slept through the whole day.

He sat down in his chair and wondered, not for the first time, if Sherlock was purposely avoiding him and if they were going to talk about this.

He sat there for another hour until he went back to bed and lay there, staring at the ceiling once again until he fell asleep.

 

He was sitting in his chair the next day after his shift when Sherlock walked in as though a tumultuous wind blew into the room.

They both froze and stared at each other.

John was acutely aware of the silver band around his finger and the weight of it now.

John had so much he wanted to say and so much he should have said, but he didn’t and he couldn’t. They just stared at each other until Sherlock moved quickly, stripping himself of his coat, gloves, and scarf.

He stared at John for a long while before he spoke up and John missed his deep baritone so much he wasn’t sure how he had never noticed that he missed it so much.

“I’m sorry.”

John sighed and rubbed his hands into his eyes. “Do you even know why you’re sorry, Sherlock?”

Sherlock nodded slowly. “I betrayed the vows we made to each other.”

John nodded. “Yes, you did.”

Sherlock got up and began to pace. John wasn’t sure what to say so he didn’t say anything at all.

Sherlock paced for what must have been ten minutes before he knelt besides John and John smelled that scent of chemicals and cologne and body wash and knew he’d missed it more than he’d like to admit.

Sherlock searched for something in his eyes before he spoke.

“John Watson, I am so sorry for not being the man you believed me to be.” John opened his mouth in indignation to object to that presumption but Sherlock held up his hand and continued to talk.

“I am so sorry that I am not that man because you have always sought to find my potential, my gifts, and the very best parts of me which I am blinded to by a biased perspective. I am so sorry that I cannot live up to that idea. I am trying, John. I have tried so very hard to keep you, because once you are gone science is all I have left and I may as well have nothing.”

John could only stare in shock at his confession. Sherlock jumped to his feet and began to pace again.

“I’m made a grievous mistake, my dear Watson, is not being the man you claim me to be and I try. I do so try, but as loathsome an idea as it is to admit, I am human, I have made human mistakes and I will do it again. I am sorry, John. But I need you to stay, I need my blogger, and my good doctor, and my partner, and my assistant. I need my husband. Because I, John, am a brain, a functioning brain in a meat suit, and you. Oh you, John Watson-Holmes, you are heart, and compassion. And if I have been forced to chose between a drug and your presence in my life for every day after I will choose you. I will always choose you, John.”

John didn’t move. He only stared.

Sherlock stopped his pacing and stared for a long while at John.

It felt like eons had passed until Sherlock stiffened and slipped on his coat and gloves.

“I may have miscalculated the depth of your affection for me and therefore miscalculated the probability of your choosing to stay my husband. I shall take myleave and be gone by tomorrow.” He put a hand on the door and John dashed forward and swiveled him around.

John looked him in the eyes and for the first time in his life Sherlock couldn’t understand the scrutiny of that stare.

“You are an arrogant, pompous, and horrendously unsociable man. You have made a mistake I’m not sure I can forgive and you have made me more disappointed than I could fathom; even more than I felt with Harry.”

Sherlock’s shoulders tightened and he moved to open the door until John stopped him once more.

This time John had a smile on his face. “And I’ll take what I can get.”

Sherlock looked at him, looked for signs of lies or dishonesty and when he found none he rejoiced by giving John a passionate kiss and carrying him to their bed.

Their bed.

As it would be.


End file.
